Madcap May

by Richard Kurin

  May applied to the Naturalization Bureau for the return of her American citizenship. Under the law, May would have to demonstrate she was of sound morals—which may have been a bit more difficult in her youth, but was easier to show in old age.

  May also took her case to the papers and generated a broad outpouring of support. Only a few days passed before Mary Ward, the Commissioner of Naturalization and Immigration for Boston, announced that May Yohe would be re-granted her citizenship.

  On April 4, 1938, May entered Federal Court in Boston and took the oath of citizenship as Mary Augusta Smuts. On her official documents she indicated her true birth date of April 6, 1866, not 1869.

  Two days later, in honor of her birthday, the Washington Post ran an editorial about her entitled “Soon Forgotten,” and noted that

  May Yohe enjoyed (that’s the word) unprecedented publicity … and a career that would have filled a score of lives. [Recently] … there was none to do her honor, none to recognize her, none to detect any traces of that glamour which once cast about her head an aura exceeding the brilliance of the famous gem she wore to Queen Victoria’s court. She, who had had her cake and had eaten it, too, and in almost fabulous slices, was just a troublesome old woman.2

  John Smuts and May Yohe in Life magazine, circa 1935. (photo credit 16.1)

  On May 4, 1938, newspapers around the country reported that “May Yohe, once the toast of two continents and a dinner companion of royalty, got up at 6 a.m. today and went to work as a $16.50 a week W.P.A. research clerk.” May said, “I’m happier than ever before.”3

  May’s job was to transfer vital statistics from old written ledgers to card catalogs. After a few weeks of work, she was asked how she was doing at her job, May responded that she was “holding her own” with the younger workers.4

  May Yohe’s citizenship petition, as Mary Augusta Smuts, April 4, 1938. (photo credit 16.2)

  Less than four months later, on August 28, May lay down to sleep. According to Smuts,

  Shortly after midnight she wakened me. She said she couldn’t breathe well. I got a pillow to put under her head. She slumped forward and died in my arms, just like going to sleep.5

  As if attentive to May’s stagecraft, Smuts somberly told reporters, “It was a beautiful way to die.”6

  Apparently May was not strong enough to weather the arterial sclerotic heart disease and chronic vascular nephritis that did her in. Her funeral was held at the Thornton Funeral Home in Roxbury and her body cremated at the Forest Hills Cemetery; several days later, Smuts took a boat out on the Atlantic Ocean to spread her ashes as she had requested. “She loved nature and open spaces and abhorred funeral pomp,” he said.

  The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, the Boston papers, and Time magazine all carried notices and articles about Miss May Yohe. Evalyn Walsh McLean, the owner of the Hope diamond, wrote for “My Say,” her newspaper column, “May Yohe may not have been all that the standards of etiquette call for but she certainly proved herself to be a real woman and I salute her memory with sincere admiration and deep respect.”7

  May Yohe at home, 1938. (photo credit 16.3)

  The Chicago Tribune reflected on her passing with “A Myth Goes a Glimmering”

  So May Yohe is dead, after all these years of serving as a heroine for articles in syndicated Sunday supplements about the actress who had once been in possession of the Hope diamond, alleged to carry a fatal curse. It is surprising to find that the touch of mortality has fallen upon a character who seemed to be permanently enshrined in American folklore. We had never thought of May Yohe as a human being—she was like a figure of mythology.8

  Amen.

  I’ve done pretty nearly everything

  in my life except theft and murder,

  but thank God whatever I’ve done,

  my heart’s been in it.

  —May Yohe, reflecting on her life1

  Epilogue

  MAY’S LEGACY, REALLY ONLY A SHADOW of this larger-than-life lady, is still with us today, albeit in various forms.

  Most concretely, the Hope diamond that she helped make famous rests today in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. It is, along with the Mona Lisa, the most visited museum object in the world, seen by up to eight million visitors a year, and millions more through television programs, web pages, and other media.

  There are other touchstones of her life.

  Though May’s mother, Lizzie Batcheller, died in 1918, her magnificent Queen Anne-style house still stands in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, a symbol of history connecting the local community to fame beyond its bounds. While May is much celebrated by the Hastings Historical Society and in the tours it periodically sponsors, her former home is now known as the “Gribben House,” after its subsequent owner. The interior has changed significantly since May’s time, with a family room and master-suite addition. It is now painted white and has modern utilities. In contrast to the open landscape of May’s time, scores of homes now dot the landscape all around it, but you can still see the Hudson River as clearly as May must have seen it more than a century ago from its distinctive and still extant tower and turret. The house bears witness to May and Lizzie’s residency—evidenced by the old wood paneling, a stained glass window, blue Delftware tiles on the fireplace, and built-in panel doors for the living room. The veranda has been renovated, but one can still envision reporters camped out on it, interviewing the kimono-clad May and waiting for the latest news about Captain Strong and her jewels during that infamous summer of 1902. Even though the driveway was relocated from Villard to Edgar Road in the 1940s, traces of the old one remain. It is easy to imagine May yearning to see Strong walking up that drive to return to her.

  May’s husband Lord Francis Hope became the eighth duke of Newcastle after his brother died in 1928. Due to his profligacy, the Hope diamond, Old Master paintings, Deepdene, and Castle Blayney were all sold off. When he died in 1941 at the age of seventy-five, Henry Edward, his son by his second wife, became the ninth duke. Henry Edward died childless in 1988, and was succeeded by a distant cousin as the tenth duke. When that childless cousin died less than two months later, the dukedom became extinct. Clumber Castle was demolished in the 1930s and never rebuilt. Deepdene was demolished in the late 1960s after serving as a hotel, British Railways wartime headquarters, and office building. Castle Blayney served as a military barracks, hospital, and Franciscan retreat. It is now a small, somewhat run-down hotel, restaurant, and special-events venue in Lake Muckno Park run by the municipality.

  After leaving May, Putnam Bradlee Strong was arrested in China and worked in a Macao casino and for the Thai government. He sought to fight against the Turks and join the U.S. Army Reserves. After his escapades with May, his mother paid him to stay out of the United States. They reconciled in Germany, and while she left him money in her will, it was half of what she left her daughter. Strong married divorcée Norma Ashby in 1912 and adopted her daughter Kathryn Ashby Davis from her first marriage to Henry Shackelford Davis. That marriage too ended, and Strong married Mildred Stark Strong. The couple settled down in Culpeper, Virginia, where he died in 1945.

  May’s last husband, John Smuts, might not have been quite the person May thought he was. Smuts married a young woman, Ethel Wood, in December 1938, just four months after May’s death.2 He died of a heart attack in 1939. By some accounts, Smuts was married and divorced before meeting May and deserted his several children.3

  Yori Komatsu, May’s dedicated maid whom she brought to the United States from Yokohama and who then was with her for years, was reported—by May—to have married a wealthy New Yorker. I have not succeeded in tracking down information that confirms May’s account.

  Robert Edgar Thomas, who claimed to be May’s birth son, had a short career in Hollywood. He appeared as a bit player in the 1936 western, Ride, Ranger, Ride, which starred Gene Autry. He is listed in the Burbank City Directory in
1940 along with his wife Eunice M. Thomas. She was a resident of San Diego when she died in 2001. I haven’t been able to find out anything else about him.

  Solving the mystery of Thomas’s birth and May’s seemingly extraordinary role in it would be a noteworthy accomplishment. If we could track down Thomas’s descendants and the descendants of May’s known relatives, including the Parkes, the Beatties, or the Cummings, we could test their DNA to see if they are related, and how. A test of this kind could not only rule out May out as the mother, but might also reveal whether May’s cousin Adeline was the mother or not.

  Photographs of May Yohe are found in Britain’s National Archive, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, in the Library of Congress, and in the New York Public Library. The Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center has scrapbooks that faithful fans put together over the years. May Yohe memorabilia can sometimes be found on eBay—specially monogrammed buttons, a cigarette case, celebrity cards, and playbills.

  And what of May herself?

  Though May never returned to Bethlehem in life, she seems—at least to some—to have done so in death.

  The old Eagle Hotel, owned and operated by her grandparents, the place where May was born and spent her early years, was torn down and replaced on the same site by the Hotel Bethlehem, which opened in 1922. The new hotel was built at the direction of Charles M. Schwab, the president of Bethlehem Steel. He wanted a more modern hotel to host visitors to his company town in its heyday. Schwab had been named as a possible buyer of the Hope diamond when Frankel’s owned it in the early years of the 20th century, but he passed on the purchase.

  The Hotel Bethlehem is a grand hotel, now renovated several times. Over the past few decades, staff and guests have claimed to have seen various ghosts, including that of May Yohe. The place is thought to be haunted. After a fire in 1989, a priest was even called in by management to assuage any lingering spirits. More recently, instead of trying to “quell the reports, the hotel has decided to embrace them,” says hotel historian Natalie Bock.4

  “Friendly” ghosts are said to be found in different parts of the hotel, and especially in room 932. In this room guests have supposedly heard voices, seen reflections in the mirror that weren’t there for real, and have “reported unexplained happenings; papers standing upright, or flying off the desk, lamps flashing, the bathroom wallpaper turning pink.”5 Paranormal investigators conducted examinations in 2007 and again in 2009. They claim to have recorded voices and seen blurry shadows of ghosts and witnessed the door to room 932 shutting itself inexplicably. Though they do not know which ‘ghosts’ occupy the room, one of the voices heard in 2007 is supposed to have said, “It’s Mary.”

  Bock’s speculation is that Mary Augusta Yohe’s ghost visits the Hotel Bethlehem because she had her happiest times singing and dancing in the hotel lobby of the old Eagle which preceded it. According to the hotel’s account, a youthful May has been seen in the third-floor exercise room and in the lobby areas. Some housekeeping staff have reported imprints of a small hand, like that of a little girl, supposedly May, on mirrors, rails, and other surfaces. Bock has carefully marketed the ghostly May. Staff and guests “say they can still hear May, and when our player piano turns on by itself (as it often does!). When that happens, we think we know who it is!”6 With hubris and bravado May, it seems, is still entertaining guests and larger audiences today.

  Hotel Bethlehem brochure. (photo credit epl.1)

  Fanciful ghost stories aside, May Yohe is a phantom of history, leaving us with barely discernible features of a bygone era, of a life lived that by any stretch of the imagination was bigger than almost any lives we’ve known.

  May Yohe was, as one commentator put it, “an eccentric bit of femininity.”7 She lived enough for several people, did many amazing things, and had many exceptional highs and awful lows. Her activities stretched across the planet, and she experienced life in the limelight of the stage, as well as on her knees scrubbing floors. She sought and relished the cheering appreciation of fans, and felt as well the jeers of a disdainful public fed up with the narcissistic drama of failed romance, an empty jewelry box, and hard times.

  May would be disappointed that so few now know her name. She knew she had an amazing life story. As she told a San Francisco reporter, “I should cause earthquakes all over the world with my book … but I’m afraid I should have too many libel suits. I shall let some one else rattle the bones in my closet after I am dead.”8 Now, with this biography, we are rattling those bones, and May might take heart from knowing that someone can learn a lesson or two from her triumphs and tribulations. She was a pretty, talented, and smart woman—and one with a long list of foibles—who just wouldn’t stay down. She strove to become everything she could possibly hope to imagine, and by overcoming amazing challenges and obstacles, she did. Inside her was strength and fortitude, a perspicacity to succeed that overrode all that she faced. If any of us can be inspired by that most ennobling characteristic, May will have performed her role very well.

  MAY YOHE TIMELINE

  1866 Mary Augusta Yohe (May) is born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania to William Yohe and Elizabeth Batcheller, and the next year baptized into the Moravian church.

  1866–79 May grows up with her grandparents, the proprietors of the Eagle Hotel in Bethlehem, and with her mother in Philadelphia

  1872 William, who had divorced Elizabeth, marries Rebecca Lewis.

  1879–85 May attends schools in Dresden, Germany and Paris, France.

  1885 William Yohe dies.

  1886 May performs in The Little Tycoon in Philadelphia and in Josephine Sold by Her Sisters in New York.

  1887 May appears in Lorraine in New York City and Chicago and in The Arabian Nights in both cities.

  1888 May appears in Natural Gas in Chicago. She has her first speaking role in The Crystal Slipper at the Chicago Opera House. She runs off with Eli Shaw, causing a scandal, and there are false rumors they will marry. Gossip columns assert that May married actor Jack Mason in Boston.

  1889 May performs in a tour of Natural Gas and in The City Directory.

  1890 May is rumored to have married sportsman Thomas Williams in San Francisco. May travels to Australia.

  1891 May performs in U and I, The City Directory, and Hoss and Hoss in New York and Chicago.

  1892 May is rumored to have married a Massachusetts senator. She meets Lord Francis Hope in New York.

  1893 May makes her London debut in The Magic Opal at the Lyric Theatre. She stars in Mam’zelle Nitouche and in Little Christopher Columbus to great public and critical acclaim, including praise from George Bernard Shaw. “Oh Honey, My Honey” becomes her theme song.

  1894 May continues in Little Christopher Columbus. She stars in Lady Slavey. Rumors circulate of her marriage to Lord Francis Hope. They wed quietly in November.

  1895 May and Lord Francis reveal their marriage. She is introduced to London society as the prospective duchess of Newcastle and claims to have worn the Hope diamond. May stars in Dandy Dick Whittington. Lord Francis is declared bankrupt.

  1896 May revives Mam’zelle Nitouche and successfully manages the Court Theatre. May aids Irish peasants at Hope’s Castle Blayney estate. She stars in The Belle of Cairo.

  1897 May retires from the London stage.

  1898 May does charity work in London’s Whitechapel with the dowager Duchess of Newcastle.

  1899 Lord Francis Hope tries to sell the Hope diamond but fails because of the objections of his siblings. Lord Francis and May begin a world tour.

  1900 May and Lord Francis live in Sydney, Australia, and complete a world tour, meeting Captain Putnam Bradlee Strong on the trans-Atlantic crossing. May claims to have worn the Hope diamond for the second time. May signs contracts to perform in the United States, appearing in The Giddy Throng in New York on Christmas Eve.

  1901 May appears in White Rats in Boston and performs in Chicago. She shares an apartment in New York with Strong and runs off with him to San Francisco and then Y
okohama, Japan, where they enjoy local life. Lord Francis sells the Hope diamond.

  1902 Lord Francis is again declared bankrupt and is granted a divorce from May. Strong and May return to New York as a common-law couple, living in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York with May’s mother Elizabeth. Strong threatens suicide, steals May’s jewels, and flees the country, creating an international scandal. May threatens Strong’s arrest and follows his trail to London, Paris, and Lisbon. The couple reconciles and marries in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

  1903 May and Strong return to New York and then to Argentina.

  1904 May returns to the stage in London, Liverpool, and Brighton, and in New York at Oscar Hammerstein’s venues.

  1905 May and Strong perform vaudeville in New York and Atlanta to poor reviews. Strong deserts May in November and she files for divorce and sells the house in Hastings-on-Hudson.

  1906 May performs in vaudeville in New York and in the lead as Mam’zelle Champagne.

  1907 May continues performing in lesser vaudeville venues in Chicago and California; she is rumored to marry Newton Brown.

  1908 May is associated with an anonymous San Francisco millionaire as well as former British Army officer John Rowlands. She lives in Portland, Oregon as Mrs. James Fellows, the spouse of a Canadian businessman. She gives a baby boy up for adoption to Edward and Rosa Thomas.

  1909 May is alleged to have married a Canadian lumberman named Murphy and to have had an affair with Lord Sholto Douglas. She travels to Singapore, Ceylon, and India.

  1910 May’s divorce from Strong is finalized. She performs in San Francisco and is stricken with paralysis. She is rumored to have married F. M. Reynolds.