Madcap May
Page 20
1911 May performs in Chicago, at Hammerstein’s Victoria Theatre in New York, and in Washington. She and boxer Jack McAuliffe announce their engagement.
1912 May continues to perform in New York and Boston.
1913 May appears in Come Over Here at the London Opera House; she takes up the case of London chorus girls and meets John Smuts.
1914 Smuts and May marry and live in South Africa.
1915 Smuts serves in the British army and is wounded in a World War I battle with the German army in South-West Africa. May serves as a nurse.
1915–17 May and Smuts live in India where he recuperates. They then move to Singapore, where, befriending the Sultan of Johore, Smuts becomes the manager of a rubber plantation and May performs at the Victoria Theatre.
1918 Seeking to rejoin the British army, Smuts leaves for Seattle with May. Denied reenlistment, he works in a shipyard, and when he is stricken with influenza, May works as a custodian. May’s mother Lizzie dies.
1919–21 May and Smuts live in Los Angeles and run a chicken farm. She writes a nationally syndicated serial newspaper story on the Hope diamond and works on a book and a silent film. May and Smuts sell the chicken farm.
1921–23 May and Smuts return to the East Coast, auction more possessions, and open a tea room in Manhattan that fails. May performs in Boston and New York. The couple opens the Blue Diamond Inn in Marlow, New Hampshire.
1924 An arsonist burns down the Blue Diamond Inn. Smuts is shot in the chest—the Boston police suspect May, but the couple claims it resulted from an accident while he was cleaning a gun.
1925 May appears on a radio show on WBZ in Springfield, Massachusetts.
1926–34 May performs periodically and participates in charity events; the couple auctions off possessions. They live in Revere, Suffolk County, Massachusetts.
1935 May breaks a rib in January and in June is admitted to the hospital for a broken arm and a brain injury; later, she is admitted to a sanitarium. Robert Thomas files suit claiming he is May’s biological son.
1936–37 The maternity case proceeds through the courts. May takes a bus from Boston to Portland and is briefly taken into police custody suffering from hallucinations.
1938 Applying for a W.P.A. job, May discovers she lost her U.S. citizenship when she married a British citizen. The Thomas maternity suit is decided in May’s favor. May successfully petitions to regain her citizenship. She dies in her sleep at age 72; her body is cremated and her ashes spread in the Atlantic Ocean.
Currently May’s ghost is said to haunt the Hotel Bethlehem.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am grateful to Veronica Conkling who, as a Smithsonian research associate, helped bring this book to fruition by investigating various aspects of May’s life, researching photographs, securing needed permissions for use of historical materials, and aiding in the assembly of notes. Pat McAndrew, an author and researcher from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, contributed mightily to discovering information about Bethlehem, the Yohes, and May’s early life in the region. Smithsonian interns Sarah Rothenberg and Eva Falls provided dedicated research assistance, carrying out the historical detective work that forms the basis of this book. I also thank colleagues in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: Charlene Donchez Mowers, the President of Historic Bethlehem, and Natalie Bock, the Hotel Bethlehem historian, for their research help and insights. Closer to home, my daughter, Jaclyn Kurin, helped examine legal documents.
Thanks are due to the readers of the manuscript who made fine suggestions: my esteemed Smithsonian colleagues, Evelyn Lieberman, Alison McNally, and Diana Parker; curators Amy Henderson of the National Portrait Gallery and Dwight Bowers of the National Museum of America History; and director Carolyn Gleason of Smithsonian Books. Smithsonian National Board members Peggy Burnet, Sako Fisher, Patricia Frost, Shelby Gans, Judy Huret, and Phyllis Taylor were encouraging and insightful in their readings of several versions of the manuscript and helped it along. I have tremendous appreciation for their service to, and support of, the Smithsonian. Jaclyn Kurin and other family members, my wife Allyn, and my mother, Mary also read the manuscript and offered useful suggestions.
I am grateful to Christina Wiginton for guiding the manuscript to its final book form. Owen Andrews, who edited the volume, deserves special thanks for his very careful reading of the manuscript and good suggestions for its improvement. Coincidentally, there is a historical connection between his great-grandfather and Putnam Bradlee Strong. The Smithsonian’s LeShawn Burrell-Jones and Roberta Walsdorf provided needed support services.
Doing research through on-line databases has revolutionized what used to be tedious work. Nonetheless, it is still a pure pleasure to explore the collections of the Smithsonian, to access the tremendous resources of the Library of Congress, to sit in the reading room of the New York Public Library, and to open up the next set of clippings or an artist’s scrapbook at the New York Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center at Lincoln Center. I also appreciate the aid of the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem and its assistant archivist Lanie Graf, and the hospitality of Debby Beece and Larry May in Hastings-on-Hudson in letting me into their home to see May Yohe’s old house. Finally, I appreciate Clarie Miller and Jeffrey Krinsky letting me use their home as a welcome base for drafting the manuscript.
NOTES
CHAPTER ONE: Bethlehem’s Daughter
1. H.L. Gates, The Mystery of the Hope Diamond (New York: International Copyright Bureau, 1921), 79.
2. “It is Y-O-H-E Without an Accent,” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 7, 1895, 41.
3. “Y-O-H-E Without an Accent.” May’s mother’s family were early settlers in the Uxbridge, Massachusetts area where there was a good deal of intermarriage with the Nipmuc Indians, related to Algonquin and Narragansett peoples. So May’s assertion, while lacking any empirical evidence, could have been based on family folklore.
4. “Y-O-H-E Without an Accent.”
5. “Y-O-H-E Without an Accent.”
6. May Yohe, “The Hope Diamond Mystery” (a weekly serial in 17 chapters), Syracuse Herald, July 4, 1920 to October 24, 1920, chap. 1.
7. Haidt’s paintings are in Bethlehem’s Moravian Archives; the one depicted here is in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
8. John Hill Martin, Historical Sketch of Bethlehem in Pennsylvania with some account of the Moravian Church (Philadelphia: Printed for Orrin Rogers by John L. Pile, 1872), 122.
9. Gates, Hope Diamond, 75.
10. Cf. Bethlehem Globe Times, 1942; thanks to Pat McAndrew and to Ken Raniere for this discovery.
11. “Why I’ve Become an Uplifter,” El Paso Herald, January 5, 1912.
12. Gates, Hope Diamond, 74.
13. “Vengeance on a Murderer,” The Sun, December 28, 1880, 1.
14. “Vengeance on a Murderer.”
15. Gates, Hope Diamond, 75.
16. Gates, Hope Diamond, 75, 76.
17. Yohe, “Hope Diamond Mystery,” chap. 1.
18. Yohe, “Hope Diamond Mystery,” chap. 1.
19. Yohe, “Hope Diamond Mystery,” chap. 1.
20. Yohe, “Hope Diamond Mystery,” chap. 3.
21. “Y-O-H-E Without an Accent,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 41.
22. Gates, Hope Diamond, 78–79.
Additional references for this chapter include:
“A Centennial Putz,” New York Graphic, March 15, 1875.
“Advertisement—Hillside Garden,” Bethlehem Daily Times, April 9, 1877. Bethlehem Directory, 1873.
“Caleb Yohe Passes Away,” Bethlehem Daily Times, November 10, 1892, 1.
“Calypso Island—a Moravian Invention,” Southern Exposure, Newsletter of South Bethlehem Historical Society vol. 15, no. 1 (Spring 2007), 1.
“Child Murder at Freemansburg,” November 1874.
“Constable’s Sale,” Bethlehem Daily Times, May 27, 1882.
“Death of W. W. Yohe,” Denver News, January 30, 1885.
“Detect
ive Yohe Missing,” Allentown Chronicle, May 5, 1882.
“Eagle Glen,” Bethlehem Daily Times, November 13, 1873.
“Eagle Hotel Putz,” Stereoscopic Gems of Bethlehem Scenery No. 31 (Bethlehem: H. T. Clauder, Bookseller and Stationer, n.d.).
“Election of a Chief Engineer,” Bethlehem Daily Times, October 21, 1872.
Aaron Spencer Fogelman, Jesus is Female: Moravians and Radical Religion in Early America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).
“Funeral of W. W. Yohe,” Denver News, February 3, 1885.
“Funerals—Mrs. Mary M. Yohe,” January 29, 1885.
“Hillsdale Garden of W. W. Yohe”, Bethlehem Daily Times, April 9, 1877.
Joseph Mortimer Levering, A history of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 1741–1892 with some account of its founders and their early activity in America (Bethlehem, PA: Times Publishing Company, Printers and Publishers, 1903).
“Looking for a Clue,” Bethlehem Daily Times, April 26, 1877.
“Married,” Bethlehem Daily Times, June 12, 1872.
“Married,” Harrisburg, December 25, 1863.
Donald M. McCorkle, “The Moravian Contribution to American Music,” Notes, Music Library Association, 2nd series, vol. 13, no. 4 (1956), 597–606.
“Misbehavior in Church,” Bethlehem Daily Times, October 21, 1872.
Elizabeth Myers, “Caleb Yohe,” September 26, 1928.
“Obituary—Mrs. Mary M. Yohe,” Bethlehem Daily Times, January 26, 1885.
“Obituary—Samuel S. Yohe,” October 1902.
Frederick Clifton Pierce, Batchelder, Batcheller Genealogy (Chicago: W.B. Conkey Company, 1898), 501–03.
“Pleasure Grounds, Young Ladies Seminary,” 1865–75, stereoscope by M. A. Keckner, item 114, Robert N. Dennis collection.
“Sets of Portraits of May Yohe,” Strand Magazine, vol. 10 (July-December, 1895), 6.
“The Yohe Forgery Case,” Easton Express, April 25, 1882.
Raymond Walters, Bethlehem Long Ago and Today (Bethlehem: Carey Printing Company, 1923).
“Yohe’s Hotel, The Eagle,” Godey’s Lady’s Book, October 1858.
Documents:
Baptism of Mary Augusta Yohe, April 6, 1867, Central Moravian Church Register, 1865–1892, MF 22.3, p. 20.
Civil War Veterans’ Card File, 1861–65, Pennsylvania State Archives.
Death of Mary Magdealena Yohe, n. 2851, January 25, 1885, Central Moravian Church Register, 1865–1892, MF 22.3, p. 587.
Deed, Caleb Yohe and Mary his wife to George H. Meyers, The Eagle Hotel, Bethlehem, Pa, 1874.
Excise Tax enumeration, State of Pennsylvania, Division One, of Collection District Eleven, May 1865.
Pension Application for Service in the U.S. Army, William Yohe, December 15, 1879. NARA T289.
U.S. Census, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 8th Ward, 1st Election District, 1880, 211.
U.S. Census, Schedule l, Inhabitants in 8th Ward, District 22, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, November 15, 1870, 7.
U.S. Census, South Bethlehem, Northampton, Pennsylvania, 1880.
U. S. Passport Application of William W. Yohe, n. 6021, April 25, 1878.
CHAPTER TWO: Footlights Goddess
1. “May A. Yohé.” On and Off: thirty-five Actresses interviewed by “The Call Boy.” Gilbert Dalziel (London: November 1893), 44.
2. On and Off, 75.
3. Gates, Hope Diamond, 79.
4. According to the Yardville Inn, May hosted lovers up in her room in the late 1800s as Lady Hope, cf., http://www.yardvilleinn.com/HISTORY.html. The timing is problematic, and it is more likely that if true, this could have been a location for trysts with Captain Strong in 1900–01. Still, she would have known about the roadhouse/inn from visits in the late 1880s.
5. “Why May Yohe Longed for the Footlights Again,” Washington Post, August 28, 1910, 8.
6. “On and Off,” 44.
7. Yohe, “Hope Diamond Mystery,” chap. 3.
8. Yohe, “Hope Diamond Mystery,” chap. 3.
9. Yohe, “Hope Diamond Mystery,” chap. 3; Gates, Hope Diamond, 80.
10. Yohe, “Hope Diamond Mystery,” chap. 3; Gates, Hope Diamond, 80.
11. “Miss Yohe’s Serenade,” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 21, 1887, 18.
12. “Aladdin is Coming,” New York Times, July 29, 1887, 2.
13. New York Times, March 9, 1888.
14. New York Times, March 9, 1888.
15. Gates, Hope Diamond, 81.
16. “The Theatres,” Chicago Daily Tribune, February 14, 1888, 5.
17. Gates, Hope Diamond, 81.
18. New York Times, May 4, 1888.
19. “The Local Theaters,” The Current, June 23, 1888, 62.
20. “Theatrical,” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 27, 1890, 36.
21. Letter to the editor by Russell Thompson: “Youth of May Yohe” in response to James O’Donnell Bennett. Original source unknown.
22. Original source unknown.
23. “Y-O-H-E Without an Accent,” 41.
24. “The Sequel to an Elopement,” Washington Post, July 14, 1888, 1.
25. “They Were Divorced and Reunited,” Chicago Daily Tribune, September 15, 1889, 9.
26. “Miss May Yohe’s Marine: He is heard from After an Absence of Eight Years,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 20, 1888, 1.
27. “Cinderella was Angry,” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 23, 1888, 4.
28. Don Gillan, “An Unsuitable Peer-Bride,” www.stagebeauty.net, 2007.
29. “Ought Actresses Wed?” Chicago Daily Tribune, October 21, 1888, 27.
30. “Rousing Success,” Boston Daily Globe, November, 3, 1890, 2.
31. Yohe, “Hope Diamond Mystery,” chapters 5 and 6.
32. “Music and The Drama,” The Examiner, November 24, 1900, 3.
33. “The New Opera House,” The Sydney Morning Herald, April 7, 1890, 9.
34. “Madcap” is first used to describe May’s behavior in 1889 with regard to the escapade with E. B. Shaw; see “They Were Divorced and Reunited,” Chicago Daily Tribune, September 15, 1889. Frank Whelan, in “At Turn of the Century, Singing Scandalizing May Yohe Conquered New World and Old” (The Morning Call, March 22, 1992), believes the nickname resulted from the scandal over an 1893 episode when May had an affair with a New York state senator. Also, cf., “Two Bewitching Girls,” Los Angeles Times, May 24, 1891, 5. May refers to herself as a “madcap girl” in “May Yohe is Wretchedly Woefully Disappointed,” The World, February 12, 1901, 4. In a 1918 interview in Singapore, May suggested that she’d acquired the moniker in London; see “Every Woman Can Come Back Once, Declares May Yohe, Who’s Trying Again,” The Evening Telegram, May 15, 1921. “Madcap May” is taken for granted in “Again the Hope Diamond Blamed for Misfortune,” Atlanta Constitution, December 21, 1924, F8.
Additional references for this chapter include:
Nicholas van Hoogstraten, Lost Broadway Theatres, (Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997).
“May Yohe’s Reported Marriage,” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 12, 1889, 3.
“May Yohe’s Sudden Trip,” Chicago Daily, July 4, 1888, 1.
Bailey Millard, “Thomas Hansford Williams,” The San Francisco Bay Region, v. 3 (American Historical Society), 268–70.
Lilian and John Mullane, “Diamonds are [not always] Forever: May Yohe, the Hope Diamond, and Hastings-on-Hudson,” Hastings Historian, vol. 39, no. 1 (Winter, 2009).
“Says She Was Not Away,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 5, 1888, 1.
“Was It An Elopement,” New York Times, July 5, 1888, 2.
Documents:
Map of Hastings-on-Hudson in Joseph R. Bien, Atlas of Westchester County, New York (New York: Julius Bien & Co.: New York, 1893).
Maps of Hastings-on-Hudson in George Bromley and Walter Bromley. Atlas, Westchester County, New York, Volume 2. (New York: G. W. Bromley & Co., 1881; Philadelphia, PA, 1907).
Deeds:
Dressner to Yohe, Liber 1598, page 306. Filed and re
corded December 18, 1901. Deeds, Westchester County Clerk’s Office, White Plains, New York.
Yohe to Gribben, Liber 1635, page 291. Filed and recorded February 2, 1903. Deeds, Westchester County Clerk’s Office, White Plains, New York.
Playbills:
The Little Tycoon, Temple Theatre, Philadelphia February 8, 1886.
Josephine, Wallack’s, New York, September 20, 1886.
Lorraine, Star Theatre, New York, March 5, 1887.
The Arabian Nights, Standard Theatre, New York, October 22, 1887; Academy of Music, New York, December 5, 1887; The People’s Theatre, New York, December 19, 1887; Chestnut Street Opera House, Philadelphia, December 26, 1887.
Natural Gas, Fifth Avenue Theatre, New York, May 1, 1888.
CHAPTER THREE: Nobly Courted
1. Gates, Hope Diamond, 90.
2. Gates, Hope Diamond, 74.
3. Gates, Hope Diamond, 84–85.
4. Gates, Hope Diamond, 85.
5. Gates, Hope Diamond, 86–87.
6. Gates, Hope Diamond, 87.
7. Gates, Hope Diamond, 87.
8. Gates, Hope Diamond, 88.
9. Gates, Hope Diamond, 89.
10. Gates, Hope Diamond, 90.
11. Gates, Hope Diamond, 90.
12. Gates, Hope Diamond, 90.
CHAPTER FOUR: Hopeful
1. “What is Life Without Hope?” Boston Daily Globe, April 4, 1912, 15.
2. Lord Byron had earlier disparaged Hope’s work on furniture, but reportedly cried reading his Anastasius in 1819.
3. Henry Philip Hope, A Catalogue of a Collection of Pearls and Precious Stones, compiled by Bram Hertz, (London: 1839), 25.
4. Henry and Irene Law. The Book of the Beresford Hopes (London: Heath Cranton, Ltd., 1925), 114.
5. Benjamin Disraeli, Disraeli’s Reminiscences, ed. Helen and Marvin Swartz (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1975), 19–20.
6. “Two Famous Diamonds,” Hawke’s Bay Herald, April 25, 1888, 3 (originally published in New York World).